Wishing
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
“Don’t wish your life away,” my mother annoyingly says over the phone. I roll my eyes and sigh so deeply, that she can hear it eight time zones away.
“I just want this part of my life to be over already, so I can move on.” I am whining about wanting to be an adult, to know and understand what I’m supposed to be doing. Mother reminds me that whining isn’t a very adult thing to do, and suggests that I seek a more constructive outlet for my angst. She suggests that I draw, write, paint, go for a walk… To which I say no, no, no, and no. I have backed this woman into a corner, and she knows it, getting off the phone as quickly as possible.
I used to hear the phrase ‘don’t wish your life away’ is one that has always mystified me. How can anything take a life away? Do people really just wish their life away and not do anything? How boring would it be just to sit around and wish rather than be happy with what is in front of you?
It wasn’t until recent days that I’ve realized that, given the opportunity, I would completely wish my life away, or at the very least I’d worry my life away. So often, as I find myself increasingly sucked into adulthood, there are annoying little details, unknown variables, that I wish were solved. I sit on my bed and listen to my friends Skype me about their mortgages or events that staple them down to one place and I find myself just slightly envious. I don’t want my entire life laid out in front of me, knowing each day in advance the surprises and tragedies that would unfold. I tell myself I want to live a life of adventures and unknowns, thinking that makes me superior to my suburban friends. But in truth all of this are lies I tell myself.
The amount of time I waste wishing I knew how my life would unfold is shocking and a bit maddening. Rather than going out and writing letters or seeking opportunities to grab the life I want, or rather wish for, I stay in and think of all possible permutations of disaster that can befall on me. And it does nothing.
The truth is I would be very glad to sit in my room and wish my life away. Living in fear is never beneficial to anyone and usually makes failure only more certain. The wish to remain ‘safe’ is overwhelmingly small minded and stifling. And I, a woman considered by most to be of great adventure, fall victim to it every time.
In the end, to stay safe, to wish one’s life away, is to refuse to live life at all. We are supposed to learn from the challenges which are put in front of us, and to wish we were anywhere else is to throw away, with both hands, all the good gifts which life has given to us. If the point of being here is to learn, to experience, to exist fully in the moment, then to look longingly at somewhere where we don’t currently belong, lustfully wishing that something was different is, quite simply, a failure to thrive.
I think of what my mother said often these days. It’s now spring in London again and the days are getting longer. For today at least, it seems as though life is heading in the direction that I want it to go in. But in the end, it cannot be about me, what I want, or even what I wish to be. Life goes in one direction then the other, trying to teach and begging us to learn before it all becomes too late and we realize that all wished for weren’t the things that really mattered in the first place.
